Ryan Welle was greeting and Mike Clark did the shakedown at the front desk. Dan Johnson presided in the absence of our president. Kathy Austvold provided an invocation and Hal led us in song. We did Viva la Rotary and The Happy Wanderer. We took the suggestion and happily wandered as we shook hands and smiled.
John Vall and Elise Wutka, our Student Guests from Hillcrest attended again and will give us their impressions of Rotary and plans for the future next week.
Our Student Athletes were introduced by Bonnie Denzel. Matt Johnson was the star of last night’s basketball game. He is also in NHS, a Younglife leader, and in choir. He plans to attend U of Mary next year with an eye toward business. Lily Pearson is in basketball but also volleyball, NSH, choir and a Sunday school teacher. She’s planning on attending U of Jamestown with accounting and financial management as a goal.
Announcements included Wine Down Wednesday on February 13th, Steve L said that the nominating committee has a few good names, Brad is stepping back from the board and will be replaced by Anthony, and a reminder that the Otter Oration is the 26th.
Greg Darling led off the brags and fines by confessing missing last week and kicking in for a scooter buck this week. Steve Leitte bragged about the girls basketball team and Kathy thanked Dan for being able to preside for the day.
John MacFarlane introduced Karen Mansky and her husband Bruce Mattson with the Central Crosscountry Skiing Assn. Paul Mayer and Knut Ronnevik attended as friends of the program. Based in Stillwater, Bruce works an area of 12 states with Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan being the most active. The focus of the program is lifelong skiing but also Olympic development with Jessie Diggins, a gold medalist being a local product. Fergus Falls’ own Adams School has been one of the schools where they have donated 30 pairs of skis to get the kids interested in the program. The Association has also provided a book with an eight day curriculum for teaching the sport. To date they have over 5,000 pairs of skis out in the three states previously noted. They have a program that starts with kids as early as four and helps them progress through the years to encourge and assist in blossoming in the areas they want, from the lifelong hobby to the Olympics.
Bruce mentioned that the three states that have the majority of skiers are usually the heavy snow states but in the past few years some of the venues have been making snow and Hayward had to use straw in a recent meet. Keith thought that Hayward should have used hay, but that did bring up the thought that if we keep having changes to our snow events we might have to change the name to grass country skiing.
A good program with some long term benefits for all who partake.
